Demands for mobile services, especially for data services, are steadily increasing. With the introduction of mobile devices such as cell phones, tablet computers, laptop or notebook computers, etc., expectations on service availability of users have been increasing. On the network operator side the capacity of mobile communication networks is increased accordingly, therefore more and more transmission points, such as base station transceivers, access points, etc., are installed. Hardware costs and installation costs are major contributors to the overall costs that arise to operators. In the wireless world, the improvement of network efficiency and the reduction of costs become more and more important. One strategy that is discussed among operators is to share the resources, i.e. multiple operators provide their services to subscribers using the same network hardware. The sharing of resources can be accomplished in different ways. One possibility is to share the infrastructure of a mobile network, respectively the base stations, such as an eNodeB (eNB), and/or the backhaul network. A further method is to share the spectrum itself, i.e. to subdivide the bandwidth in sub-bands, which are then assigned to different operators.
When multiple operators share hardware resources and/or frequency resources, strategies are needed, on how the resources, especially the radio resources, which are used by the subscribers of the operators, are shared and assigned between the operators. Especially in high load situations, i.e. when the network capabilities are almost exhausted, efficient and transparent resource assignment mechanisms are desirable.
Document US 2009/0154415 A1 provides a scheduling apparatus and method for proportional resource allocation among Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). The method includes, for each MVNO, allocating a dedicated resource of each MVNO to Quality of Service (QoS) traffic in consideration of priorities, for each MVNO, determining a presence or absence of unscheduled QoS traffic, and for MVNOs each of which has the unscheduled QoS traffic, allocating a common resource shared by all MVNOs to the unscheduled QoS traffic in consideration of priorities without distinguishing each MVNO. Accordingly, proportional resource allocation depending on a pre-set ratio can be guaranteed, efficiency of resource use can be improved, and QoS can be guaranteed.